PHANTASIA (14 page)

“No, I go to the rafts,” she said while pointing to a number of flatboats that were rushing down the village and picking up most of the children. “Their engines run on Cron, they’re fast enough to take people to Nyle in less than an hour. Its the nearest city, and where the ships are docked. I’m supposed to board the SH-4, headed for Avalonia,” she smiled faintly.
 

“Wren… and your mother,” S chimed in, pointing to the two of them who had walked down and were now speaking at the base of the glacier. Amidst the chaos, Raven’s mother seemed to be talking calmly to Wren, although at an extremely rapid pace.
 

“What’s she saying?” Red asked.
 

“She’s giving me and Wren directions on how to survive. She said no matter what, we
have to
live.”
 

“She doesn’t seem to be crying.”
 

“She didn’t, I know she did after we were both gone, but not when we were talking now.”
 

“Did
you
cry?”
 

“For the last time ever.”
 

“Are you going to go to her now?”
 

“I already know what she says, there’s no point.”

“I know but…don’t you want to go anyways?”
 

“No.”
 

“I think you should,” S remarked. Raven said nothing but walked over cooly to Wren and her mother. Red noticed that her mother spoke to the two of them with the same distinct manner as Raven — giving sharp and concise commands despite their circumstances. She hugged them at the end of it, a scene that left a thick lump in Red’s throat, and then she and Wren walked over to where the Rafts were taking off.
This must be the last time she gets to see her,
he thought to himself.
 

 
Magnus, Butz, and surprisingly even Linx, were helping villagers evacuate their homes and enter the tunnels that led to the shelters, or board the rafts headed to Nyle. Linx had his own way of encouraging people to move faster — by describing what infection must feel like to anyone who lagged behind. Despite being a dream, their reaction to their surroundings was genuine. It was a refreshing reminder of their devotion to duty and what they would do if this ever happened in Avalonia; or
when
this happens in Avalonia, Red thought grimly.

“What’s her name?” Red asked when Raven had walked back to him and S. Wren and their mother had now walked over to where the rafts were being sent out and seemed overly attentive to a single one that was preparing to take off
.
 

“Heron.”
 

“Did you know this was going to be the last time you would get to see them?”
 

“Yeah, but I knew what had to be done. My mother raised us to be strong, always strong. Wren comes with us for a while longer anyways. You’ll see,” she said. “It should come out any second now.”
 

“What?” Red asked, but saw the answer to the question as soon he had asked it. It was an infected creature that looked like a mix between an arthropod and a giant cat. It had claws pinching through its back that seemed like they could snap a man in two, a tail that ended in the shape of a double sided axe, two heads, and a muscular body that pulsed with energy. Its skin looked spectral in nature, but the light that it gave off was corrosive. It jumped out of the water onto a platform near the rafts.
It must have come from the pod that landed in the glacier
Red thought as he berated himself for not realizing that the vessel would carry a Xenosite.

“That’s not what I saw…originally,” Raven whispered confusedly. The creature’s spine had a mane that began to light up from its tail. When the light reached the top of its body, both heads began shooting out beams of energy from their mouths that incinerated anything they touched.
 

Butz and Linx were the fastest ones to react, running towards the creature at full speed while leaping around the village to dodge its beams. Linx, despite being half the size of the creature, tackled it to the floor and then rolled over to distract it while Butz grabbed onto one of the necks, and snapped it into a quick paralysis. The other head reacted violently and lunged for a bite as Butz dodged it by a hair’s width. Wren, who was the second one there, dashed underneath the creature from behind it and slid out from its forelegs, a moment before it had a second chance to bite down on Butz, and unloaded as much pure energy as he could give off in a single burst, straight into the creature’s mouth. Energy, when not focused into a specific element or force, came out in a form called plasma. It was a rare method of manipulating mana, as the purity of its form made it more unstable and difficult to control. As a tradeoff, it was more efficient and one could generally do more damage using less mana. Red and Raven both ran towards the fight, but it was over by the time they had gotten there.
 

“That’s an infected Aeyz Cat,” Butz breathed as he lay on the floor. “How could that be in Takis? Aeyz Cats aren’t even from the outer planets, there’s no way one could have been caught for infection.”
 

“It’s not supposed to be, that’s not what I originally saw,” Raven replied.
 

“Its quite obvious what’s happening…” Linx said absentmindedly while pacing around them. They looked at the cat for an explanation, but Linx seemed disinterested in elaborating further.
 

“Please enlighten us, oh great one,” Butz said while rolling his eyes.
 

“Your dreams are beginning to mesh.”
 

“He’s right,” S replied instantly. “Of course… Butz, you’ve had nightmares about Linx being infected, haven’t you?”
 

Butz didn’t reply but his look of understanding was answer enough.
 

“What do we do from here on then?” Red asked just as Wren got up and began running towards the village. It seemed like an awkward burst of movement, but then Red realized that it must have been in sequence with Raven’s original memory.
By the time Wren had run back to them, most of the village had left, either through the tunnels or the rafts.
 

“Raven, I’m coming with you for now. I’m riding next to your raft, to make sure you get to Nyle safely. I’ll come back here and enter the tunnels myself. Are your friends going with you, or are they going into the shelters?”

Magnus was the first one to reply after a brief moment of contemplation. “We may as well leave on the ship. It was the way out for this nightmare when it really happened, wasn’t it?”
 

“Yeah, I guess,” Raven replied.

“I think it’s our best shot too. You think it might end the nightmare?” Butz asked, turning to S.
 

“I don’t know…” S replied uneasily. “It could be… but if it’s not, and we just missed something entirely, we’ll get cycled through this entire thing again.”
 

“We have to risk it, just staying here as the invasion progresses will only put us in more danger,” Magnus said.
 

“He’s right,” Raven replied. “Follow me, I know which raft to board.”
 

The flatboat they boarded was shared by three hundred other villagers. Wren rode next to them on Slink, and three other Gnashers followed behind the two of them. From the raft, Red could see the length of Slink’s entire body, an enormous serpentine frame that split the water apart as it gushed through the swamp. Everyone was quiet on board, except for a crazed preacher who managed to amass a small group of loyal listeners and a few small groups of older people that were discussing the fate of the planet.
 

“He’s a shaman,” Raven remarked when she noticed Red staring at him in annoyance.
 

“He’s clearly lost his mind, why is he on the rafts? He couldn’t have passed the bentham, look how old he is.”
 

“It’s not a perfect test, even if it’s
the
perfect test. And anyways, he’s a Maurak Shaman, they’re considered important to certain groups of people on Takis. Most of them
are
mad, or at least half mad. They’ve lost most of their senses from suffering from too much psychedelisis. But they have a devout set of followers, people who believe psychedelisis is a form of enlightenment. He has, or
had,
this weird looking igloo home at Rockmire where he collected artifacts. Everyone who wasn’t a follower, including me, still visited to hear his stories. They were entertaining.”
 

“Well, sounds better than history class.”
 

“Yeah, and you couldn’t separate the historical accounts from the fictional ones. It made things more exciting.”
 

From afar on board the raft, Red could see a Xenosite that looked to be the size of a small island, but he had to take out his microAI and zoom in to confirm that it was a single organism. The beast was of a strange breed. It did not seem to be violent. It peacefully tread along the top of the swamp as several other Xenosites clumped around its body. The hull of its shell formed an enormous dome shape against the sky and when its head was submerged, it looked more like a bulging landmass. Everyone on the raft broke out into nervous whispers as soon as they had noticed it. It made a noise like a deep bellow, similar to the screech of its cousins, but far lower in tone and louder.

“They’re nicknamed planet rippers — that breed,” Magnus broke in. “The invasion of Takis was the first time they were discovered. They’re a strain of Xenosite that specializes in terraforming different environments to make them more habitable for their hive clusters. They use a host of different methods, from releasing noxious chemicals into waters to fertilizing grounds with strange plants that nourish Xenosite. The plants are currently being studied in Avalonia; some say they’re just seeds of regular flora that have been infected.” A few other passengers on the raft listened in as Magnus continued to explain how Xenosites changed their environments.

 
“I thought the Xenosite could adapt to any environment,” Butz cut in at one point. “Why do they need to terraform planets?”
 

“They can survive in almost any environment, even ones with extremely limited resources or harsh conditions, but the ones they’re creating are more ideal for evolution.”
 

Of course
Red thought to himself. He had felt it, in that brief meeting with the queen.
Stagnation is the enemy, imperfection must be purged. Must evolve. Always evolve.
He shook his head in a puzzled expression as he realized the previous thought wasn’t his own.
 

An announcement overhead said that the raft was going to take a detour to avoid a possible intersection with Xenosites and that their arrival at Nyle would be delayed. Red tried to listen to the details of the announcement but the shouting of the shaman had become louder and he resisted the urge not to swear at the man.“THE KYRONS HAVE COME, THEIR RETURN BRINGS DESTRUCTION!” he shouted restlessly.

“Is he confused about the Xenosite?” Butz asked, turning to Raven. “Is he calling them ‘Kyrons?’”
 

“No, he’s in his own world. He’s talking about a story called ‘The Sign of Ikb’Setp.’ He thinks that the Xenosite are actually the return of an ancient race called the Kyrons, a species so devoted to achieving a perfect form in mind and matter that they became cursed by their ambition.”
 

“Cursed?”
 

“They were visited by a diety called ‘Drah’kar’ —
the false one
. A cosmic entity from the void that promised them their perfect form if only they were willing to use the void. I don’t know the rest to be honest, but the Kyrons ended up being cursed.”
 

“You don’t think its real?”
 

“I didn’t say the story wasn’t real, but that doesn’t mean that the Kyrons are the Xenosite. The Kyron’s had their own civilization. Cities, architecture, inventions. They weren’t…hives,”
 
she replied, unable to find the right word.

“What did Drah’kar want? In the story?”
 

“Drah’kar is an entity that tricks people, or sometimes entire races, as in the story of the Kyrons, into using the void to achieve their goals. But the void can’t be touched without being tainted.”
 

“But what did he
want
? What was his goal? And what did being tainted mean?” Red asked. His question was interrupted as the shaman stood up and bellowed above the crowd. “BEWARE THE EVIL EYE!” he shouted. All five of them exchanged a stunned expression with each other as the same thought crossed their minds.
   

“What did you say?” Red shouted back instantly. He walked over eagerly as everyone followed behind him.
Can’t be a coincidence
he thought to himself. The shaman had a peculiar outfit on, a cloak that looked to be made from the scales of dead sea creatures and a headdress carved out of ice and bird feathers. He held a staff made from the bark of the spiral trees they had seen in the swamps, and stood on the raft barefoot with the stems of several plants wrapped around his ankles. He had the face of an incredibly old man, and a hunched body, bent and twisted like a tree.
 

“Worlds will be torn apart, galaxies will burn…” the man whispered softly while waving an ominous finger as they approached. The crowd that was listening to him seemed to be annoyed that Red had the audacity to interrupt him.
 

“Galaxies
do
burn…” Butz remarked matter-of-factly, barely loud enough to be heard. The crowd suddenly focused on him and the sudden surge of attention made the falconer’s eyes dart nervously around the raft as if he were looking for an escape. “Well I mean… you know… they’re stars and what not… they
do
burn…” he said while awkwardly clearing his throat.
 

“Please ignore him,” S said to the shaman as he studied the five of them curiously. “Could you go on about the evil eye?” she added politely. “Or whatever it was that you were talking about.”